Fun With Hybrid Decks

Mike FloresThursday, June 24, 2010

his week we are going to talk about hybrid decks. Playing a hybrid deck is a simple and effective way of gaining an edge in Constructed Magic, in particular in the midst of a non-new Constructed format.

What is a hybrid deck?

Put simply, a hybrid deck is a mash-up of two or more distinct deck strategies. The best hybrid decks can play at least one of its embraced strategies at near-peak efficiency, and just add the additional strategies for optional positional advantage.

A great example of a hybrid deck is Thomas Refsdal's "Cephalid Life" combo deck:

This deck was played at Pro Tour–Valencia, where Dredge was the format's known boogeyman. Many players would look at Refsdal's Narcomoeba's and Bridge from Below and think "Dredge." This might be reinforced by the speed and success of his (probable) graveyard-centric Game 1 win.

On the second turn, Thomas could target the Cephalid Illusionist repeatedly with the Shuko (zero mana on each activation), milling his entire library, three cards at a time. Obviously, the three Narcomoebas, the Dread Return, the Sutured Ghoul, and the Dragon Breath would all be milled (unless he drew one of the pieces, in which case Thomas would simply flashback a Cabal Therapy—at least one would also be milled), to get all the cards into the graveyard.

At that point the three Narcomoebas would be in play, eligible for Dread Return flashback of the Sutured Ghoul, which would in turn eat all the creatures that had been milled, pick up the Dragon Breath, and—this is turn two, remember, with the opponent presumably tapped for a Birds of Paradise or some such—the Ghoul would go and gobble up the other guy.

Forget about the fact that Refsdal's deck didn't actually use the dredge mechanic, per se.

So, what is a girl to do?

Thomas could actually work a similar—but non-graveyard-reliant—combination substituting Cephalid Illusionist with Daru Spiritualist. He could target the Spiritualist repeatedly in the same way in order to elevate its toughness ... and then sacrifice the Cleric to Starlit Sanctum. This is a hair slower than the hasty Ghoul combination (which can technically win on turn one), but when the opponent has a fist—or even battlefield—full of anti-graveyard defensive measures? A Loop Junktion life combination becomes an even more certain route to victory!

The reason Refsdal's deck worked so seamlessly in two disparate directions was that the two combinations shared so much. If you were going to make a life deck based on making a big (butted) Daru Spiritualist, what would you target it with? Shuko! If you were going to Millstone yourself with a Cephalid Illusionist, what would you use? Shuko!

Yurchick's deck has that. He has the full number of Dark Depths. He has the full number of Urborgs. He has the full number of Hexmages.

But instead of the anti-anti-combination cards that PV played (Chalice of the Void on one to defeat Path to Exile and Repeal), given a hostile-to-20/20 tokens battlefield, Yurchick could just play a different combination.

By the World Championships, players like Tomoharu Saito and Andre Coimbra with their Bant Charms considered Hexmage / Depths decks easy prey for their updates to Rubin Zoo. However, no Zoo deck can easily ignore the other combination. Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry is a combination engineered for beatdown suppression, gaining life while infinitely blocking big creatures.

Think about how advantageous this particular repositioning option is for Thopter Depths. Why was Rubin Zoo so dominant against Dark Depths decks at the Pro Tour? Because who is going to beat 3 Blood Moons, 4 Ghost Quarters, and 4 copies of Knight of the Reliquary with a nonbasic land combo deck? It just isn't going to happen.

What about when the opponent is bogging himself down with Blood Moon and (relatively) inefficient mana drops to beat your nonbasic land ... but you are on a completely different combination? Different and completely unrelated combo? Meet mad value.

Personally, I love a hybrid deck even more than I love a transformative sideboard.

Recently, a number of enterprising deck designers have brought the spirit of archetype hybridization to Standard. Let's check out how some of them have put together multiple, disparate, strategies in order to generate value.

Naya Vengevine + Mythic Conscription: Next Level Naya

This past weekend's TCGplayer.com $5K Series in Hartford, Connecticut revealed a couple of different looks at hybridizing and Mythic Conscription; one of those decks was basically an aggressive Naya Vengevine deck, simply adding the Sovereigns of Lost Alara package; the other started more on the Mythic Conscription side, diversifying planeswalkers and threat quality by dipping into red, in much the same way that White-Blue Control paved the way for Red-White-Blue Planeswalkers.

For example, Day of Judgment is pretty good against Vengevine Naya; not as spectacular as it was against the pre-Vengevine versions like Naya Lightsaber and Boss Naya, maybe, but still effective. So you can see a hapless White-Blue player tapping out for a Day of Judgment, willing to accept a counterattack from Gideon Jura.

Why do so many mages love a Red-White-Blue Planeswalker deck? The ability to lay out multiple different planeswalkers ... Jace (some kind of Jace) drawing cards, Ajani Vengeant locking down the opponent's mana (or maybe gaining some life), Elspeth and Gideon defending the squad and/or smashing the face. All of them firing, all of them doing something for no mana at all, their efforts piling on to one another.

As you can see, though Alvarez cut some copies, his deck is capable of playing into that Red-White-Blue long game, with the planeswalkers all powering each other up.

But that long game is here grafted on top of a pretty servicable Mythic Conscription offense! He has all of the mana acceleration of a Mythic deck, so he can just play a third turn Jace, the Mind Sculptor if he wants to. He can slug with Sovereigns of Lost Alara ... or he can play the planeswalker game, depending on what is appropriate.

This combination is pretty interesting ... Red-White-Blue Planeswalkers evolved from a desire to unify the efforts of the White-Blue deck (Day of Judgment-resistant threats versus Baneslayer Angels). Playing the deck like this gives Alvarez that same potential, giving him the option to play around, or post-, an opposing Day of Judgment (often pretty good against a Mythic offense). Taken from the other side, Red-White-Blue Planeswalkers is consistently the control ... The Mythic offense lets him play the beatdown, too.

Unearth + Eldrazi Green: Dredgevine

Remember the Unearth deck, sometimes called Standard Dredge? You know, the deck (not unlike Thomas Refsdal's Narcomoeba / Bridge from Below deck) that didn't actually use any cards with the dredge mechanic? This deck jacked its graveyard with Hedron Crab and finished with a flurry of Extractor Demons ... often all in one turn thanks to the massive mana production of Crypt of Agadeem.

Well that deck just signed a free agency deal with the Vengevines and Eldrazi Monuments of the Eldrazi Green squad. It is such a cherry deal that the Eldrazi Green side has gotten off with no green mana at all!

The best way to fight it seems to be cheap removal (perhaps exemplified by Cunning Sparkmage). If you can cut the deck off early so that it can't start to set up its graveyard, that is the lion's share of the resistance work.

Next Level Bant + Mythic Conscription: Previous Level Bant

Naoki Shimizu is one of Japan's most celebrated deck designers. The man behind Solar Flare and Scryb & Force is back with Previous Level Bant, which adds the Sovereigns of Lost Alara combination to Next Level Bant.

Just as we saw in some of the Extended hybrid decks, package size can be key to successful hybridization. The Eldrazi Conscription package takes only five or six slots depending if you want to play three copies of Sovereigns of Lost Alara or the full four; just as adding the Sword of the Meek combination to Hexmage / Depths was relatively painless ... That is why so many disparate strategies from Naya Vengevine to Red-White-Blue Planeswalkers to Next Level Bant can diversify their offenses with this combination. It is particularly cheap here—adding a default-Bant combination to a different successful Bant deck—you don't even have to mess with the mana.

For an example of such a stretch ...

Vengevine Jund + Next Level Bant: Jace Jund

Last week we followed Shaheen Soorani's five Top 8 journey to a Blue Envelope using White-Blue Control; Shaheen's opponent in the finals of the 6/13 Roanoke Pro Tour Qualifier was Brad Sheppard, piloting a hybrid deck joined at the Vengevines.

In an effort to play the most super powerful cards—and Sheppard's deck does a good job of that, certainly—he linked the Jund skeleton to Jace, the Mind Sculptor, bringing in Sea Gate Oracle (a card expert in its Vengevine re-buying, care of Next Level Bant).

Interestingly, the intersection of Jund and blue mana allowed for the play of Sedraxis Specter, an A-list threat played by neither distinctly.

What is amazing to me is that as each week passes, this Standard format seems to give us more and more different ways of competing effectively. I honestly feel like this is one of the most diverse and fun Standard formats I have ever played. The recent crop of hybrid decks is just the latest in a long list of ways that we have seen innovation and interesting decks.